A few months back, I switched my family's home game from the D&D 5e Basic Rules to Lightning 5e, an ultra-lite version of D&D 5e. The game—a work-in-progress overhaul of his 2-page game One-Sheet 5e—is written by Mike Shea / Sly Flourish. He posted the link to it in a Reddit thread in which he said he reserved the right to mess with it occasionally. I've noticed he's updated it a few times, most recently in December.
An important note: I struggle to sit down and read lengthy dry texts, much less fully understand them without study. So a lot of RPGs, even the relatively simple D&D 5e, are just a little too much for me to just sit down to read and learn, much less remember the nuances in the rules. '81 D&D is a bit closer to being a fit for me, but some things about it didn't make sense to me (such as, why are saving throws a completely different list of things instead of being tied to ability scores/modifiers? And why are said ability scores/modifiers mostly irrelevant in play?)
I've run a handful of sessions with it and I quite like it! It's very elegant in its simplification of 5e while keeping all the core concepts intact. Here's the opening paragraphs where he gives the game a quick rundown:
Impressions:
I love the ease of character creation. I think part of the reason D&D 5e has a reputation of being a game where no one can bear to part with their characters is because rolling one up offline, especially with a new player, easily takes up 1-2 hours of time. Character creation here is closer to 10 minutes on the high end. Pick a background out of 20, pick a class out of the basic 4, pick a race/ancestry (could be a centaur or even a florpenboof, since race doesn't affect gameplay mechanically), lay down your ability bonuses with the provided array, fill out your various numbers (AC/HP/Attack), and you're good to go.
I love the simplicity of combat. Everybody just rolls to attack (even spellcasters) or does an action. The numbers are easy and straightforward. Monster creation is distilled to 6 stats: CR, AC or DC, HP, Attack roll bonus, Number of attacks per turn, and Damage per attack. There's a basic formula for building monsters by CR, and the numbers move up in a very predictable way. Like in the Lazy DM books, there's a formula for encounters, though it's a good bit simpler: if Player Level = Monster CR, that monster is a difficult challenge. Same with the sum of monster CRs and sum of party levels.
Honestly, I've only run a few combat encounters since the switch, so I'm not 100% sure about the monster math yet. My hunch is that maybe the jump in damage-per-attack from CR 1 (5 dmg) to CR 2 (10 dmg) and then CR3 (15 dmg), though it looks great on the chart, is a bit steep at those early levels. My level 3 players breezed through a bunch of CR 1 enemies without hardly any damage. But later, I had a group of five CR 2 monsters fighting my Level 3 party of four and one player just kept going down, and half the turns were spent healing, using potions or class abilities (I even gave the Fighter an extra ability from 5e, Second Wind, that's not actually in L5e) to stay alive. I started dishing out sub-10 damage when I'd land hits to keep everyone from going down. Did I do something wrong here?
This encounter brought something to my attention: according to RAW, a 3rd level cleric would only be able to heal twice in a day, with no rules on how utility spells could be used to handle healing. I feel this is a little low? Maybe clerics should be able to heal with utility spells.
Spellcasting is unique because it subverts the standard Spell Slot subsystem and replaces it with freeform spellcasting that... still kinda adheres to spell slots. Attack spells are just regular attack rolls, so players can say their spell does whatever, and as long as it's not OP for their level and they roll well, "whatever" is exactly what happens. Utility spells are the only ones in short supply (per day, it's your prof. bonus + your spellcasting primary ability bonus). There's a list of suggested utility spells, too, from simple to high-level, but with only a name and 3-7 words for descriptions. It's fun to see kids thinking up their own spell ideas, though mine keep trying to have their attack spells do more damage to more enemies than their usual attack calls for, heh.
Before our family switched from 5eBasic to L5e, one player had previously had Magic missile. I had scribbled their old 5e spell list on the back of their L5e character sheets, so it turned out they wanted to use MM in a recent session. I noticed that it doesn't have a functional equivalent in L5e, actually—no attack spells target more than one creature. I tossed a rule together in a pinch: they could roll 3 d4 and target up to 3 enemies with those damages if the attack roll landed. 3d4 rolls a lot higher than 1d8 on average, but it was my best-guess re-creation at the time. (Maybe just rolling to-hit, then 1d8+2 damage and letting the player designate which monsters share how much damage was more balanced.) The player was happy with it, so it all worked out.
I don't love the "0 HP=equals incapacitated with no chance of death" thing (Though the current version still has Spare the dying as a Cleric utility spell). I feel like some risk of death is important in games like D&D, but to each their own.
The simple class abilities are great. There's no multiclassing, and the abilities you do get are enough to still feel like you're playing the class's iconic form, a lot like in '81 D&D or even the D&D 5e Basic Rules. The focus in play was on the game itself and roleplaying than newcomers being intimidated by the mechanics they don't fully understand and elaborate character sheets (though in combat, players are still looking down at times to remember what abilities they can put to use).
What do you think of the game as it stands thus far? Would you run it? What would you do differently?
An important note: I struggle to sit down and read lengthy dry texts, much less fully understand them without study. So a lot of RPGs, even the relatively simple D&D 5e, are just a little too much for me to just sit down to read and learn, much less remember the nuances in the rules. '81 D&D is a bit closer to being a fit for me, but some things about it didn't make sense to me (such as, why are saving throws a completely different list of things instead of being tied to ability scores/modifiers? And why are said ability scores/modifiers mostly irrelevant in play?)
I've run a handful of sessions with it and I quite like it! It's very elegant in its simplification of 5e while keeping all the core concepts intact. Here's the opening paragraphs where he gives the game a quick rundown:
Impressions:
I love the ease of character creation. I think part of the reason D&D 5e has a reputation of being a game where no one can bear to part with their characters is because rolling one up offline, especially with a new player, easily takes up 1-2 hours of time. Character creation here is closer to 10 minutes on the high end. Pick a background out of 20, pick a class out of the basic 4, pick a race/ancestry (could be a centaur or even a florpenboof, since race doesn't affect gameplay mechanically), lay down your ability bonuses with the provided array, fill out your various numbers (AC/HP/Attack), and you're good to go.
I love the simplicity of combat. Everybody just rolls to attack (even spellcasters) or does an action. The numbers are easy and straightforward. Monster creation is distilled to 6 stats: CR, AC or DC, HP, Attack roll bonus, Number of attacks per turn, and Damage per attack. There's a basic formula for building monsters by CR, and the numbers move up in a very predictable way. Like in the Lazy DM books, there's a formula for encounters, though it's a good bit simpler: if Player Level = Monster CR, that monster is a difficult challenge. Same with the sum of monster CRs and sum of party levels.
Honestly, I've only run a few combat encounters since the switch, so I'm not 100% sure about the monster math yet. My hunch is that maybe the jump in damage-per-attack from CR 1 (5 dmg) to CR 2 (10 dmg) and then CR3 (15 dmg), though it looks great on the chart, is a bit steep at those early levels. My level 3 players breezed through a bunch of CR 1 enemies without hardly any damage. But later, I had a group of five CR 2 monsters fighting my Level 3 party of four and one player just kept going down, and half the turns were spent healing, using potions or class abilities (I even gave the Fighter an extra ability from 5e, Second Wind, that's not actually in L5e) to stay alive. I started dishing out sub-10 damage when I'd land hits to keep everyone from going down. Did I do something wrong here?
This encounter brought something to my attention: according to RAW, a 3rd level cleric would only be able to heal twice in a day, with no rules on how utility spells could be used to handle healing. I feel this is a little low? Maybe clerics should be able to heal with utility spells.
Spellcasting is unique because it subverts the standard Spell Slot subsystem and replaces it with freeform spellcasting that... still kinda adheres to spell slots. Attack spells are just regular attack rolls, so players can say their spell does whatever, and as long as it's not OP for their level and they roll well, "whatever" is exactly what happens. Utility spells are the only ones in short supply (per day, it's your prof. bonus + your spellcasting primary ability bonus). There's a list of suggested utility spells, too, from simple to high-level, but with only a name and 3-7 words for descriptions. It's fun to see kids thinking up their own spell ideas, though mine keep trying to have their attack spells do more damage to more enemies than their usual attack calls for, heh.
Before our family switched from 5eBasic to L5e, one player had previously had Magic missile. I had scribbled their old 5e spell list on the back of their L5e character sheets, so it turned out they wanted to use MM in a recent session. I noticed that it doesn't have a functional equivalent in L5e, actually—no attack spells target more than one creature. I tossed a rule together in a pinch: they could roll 3 d4 and target up to 3 enemies with those damages if the attack roll landed. 3d4 rolls a lot higher than 1d8 on average, but it was my best-guess re-creation at the time. (Maybe just rolling to-hit, then 1d8+2 damage and letting the player designate which monsters share how much damage was more balanced.) The player was happy with it, so it all worked out.
I don't love the "0 HP=equals incapacitated with no chance of death" thing (Though the current version still has Spare the dying as a Cleric utility spell). I feel like some risk of death is important in games like D&D, but to each their own.
The simple class abilities are great. There's no multiclassing, and the abilities you do get are enough to still feel like you're playing the class's iconic form, a lot like in '81 D&D or even the D&D 5e Basic Rules. The focus in play was on the game itself and roleplaying than newcomers being intimidated by the mechanics they don't fully understand and elaborate character sheets (though in combat, players are still looking down at times to remember what abilities they can put to use).
What do you think of the game as it stands thus far? Would you run it? What would you do differently?
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